EVENTS

Episode CCXLI: Squidgirl

Let’s see if closing the old long thread helps a little with the load here. Besides, you want to see the squidgirl anyway.

Also, good news: a fresh new server goes in tonight. Commenting will be temporarily shut down sometime after 9pm while the blogs get transferred, and when they’re switched on again, these performance problems should be gone.

I initially got confused yesterday because Mozilla has a Chrome folder containing an userContent-example.css in a folder called Profile under Program Files too. So I thought I must be in the right place and edited that file, changed name and nothing happened. I eventually found AppData/Roaming after someone upthread mentioned that’s where the Profile folder should be and it worked. Just mentioning in case someone got the same problem.

Going to add the sniny new tweaks now. Thank you, Owlmirror, you saver of blog experience!

Thanks for the latest temporary CSS fixes. I’m also finding it hard to get the thread to load the comments (and at 521 as I currently read it, we’re not yet pushing the Scienceblogs limit of 666 posts, here). By the way PZ, I suppose you do know that throwaway comment on the dog whistle thread will almost certainly be taken against you and misinterpreted without any hint of charity or irony?

That is a strange one. She claims to be an “equalist feminist”. To me that is a contradictio in terminis. She will defend a form of feminism from the very worst of trolling and even suggest that there is still work to do. And then essentially undermines it all by pandering to the balmy equalists who are denying that there is discrimination against women.

Pretending that we are in a post-discriminatory world is just a way to set current iniquities in stone. It is a very old ruse.

Small model rockets are damn near impossible to shoot without specialized hardware. Larger ones are much easier.

Friend in question started shooting rockets about 2 years ago, with an initial success rate of about 20%, which increased to about 75%. Divide by two for small rockets.
Small rockets are usually much more difficult, but (a) sometimes people put vmax motors in the high power rockets, which burn all their fuel as quickly as possible, resulting in really fast acceleration, (b) high power rockets are more likely to be customized or scratch built, are built from a wider variety of kits, and a much wider variety of motors, so there is more variation in the timing.

That’s right: In 0.19s, the rocket completely left the frame.

For the time between the rocket’s first movement, and the rocket leaving the Field of view, my friend and I have in a few cases looked up the newtons, divided by the mass, integrated over the height of the frame at the estimated viewing distance, and gotten much smaller numbers, albeit neglecting air resistance. But he doesn’t wait for the rocket to start moving; he times it based on the countdown, and seeing the initial puff of smoke from the igniter. There is a delay between when the igniter puffs, and when the motor starts providing thrust. (If there is visible flame, it’s too late.) That makes it a matter having precise reflexes, rather than impossibly fast reflexes.
We watch all our launches from events at a temporary range, set up by the Utah Rocket club, according to NAR safety regulations, and the first row of launchers is designed for rockets with up to G motors, so nobody is within 6 feet of the launch.

And here’s the scary part: It was running on a single half-A engine. The rocket is designed for (IIRC) up to a C.

I think with a C you’d have nearly twice as long between the igniter puffing out and when the motor actually starts providing thrust.

Oh no, not at B&W. There, she was going on about “equity feminists”. Not that I have the slightest idea of what that means.

The rest of her shtick was as thus: “you people are saying much nastier things than anyone at erv, oh yes you are! They’re just using epithets which have lost their meaning/power.” Lather, rinse, repeat many a time, then “I’ve been depressed my whole life and you’re mean! You just don’t know how much this sort of horrible stuff hurts meeeeee! Meanies! I’m going back to erv, where I’m loved!”

…“equity feminists”. Not that I have the slightest idea of what that means.

The only thing that scans is “equity = equalist”, the idea is that we are living the ideal. Their belief appears to be that, currently, all people are equal. There is a level social playing field without (I kid you not) any privilege or discrimination. Arguing against them really is a mindfuck.

I tried to point out further that offensive language that supports the inequalities of the status quo is significantly more offensive than offensive language that is harnessed to create equality. Apparently I am a ignorant n00b PZ bot.

I cannot say that I am yet as eloquent as many of the regulars but, bloody hell, I do not think they are arguing in good faith.

The LDS Church is earning some more bad PR in connection with the Boy Scout troops it sponsors.

…Elsewhere, only families of Scouts are usually targeted, and pleas are often made to groups instead of individuals. In Utah, bishops and stake presidents in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are urged to ask all members for $50 to $100 or more, and armies of Scouts and leaders are sent to visit every home (including people who are not Mormon) to make face-to-face appeals….
Donations don’t go to local Scout troops. Money goes to the administrative council to operate such things as Scout shops and campgrounds. It also helps pay some large salaries. Compensation of $148,796 was given in 2009 (the last year data are available) to Great Salt Lake Council Scout executive Rick Barnes, who replaced former executive Paul Moore and his $228,174 annual compensation.
In the Provo-based Utah National Parks Council, Scout executive Steve Royster was paid $169,990 in 2009. In the Ogden-based Trapper Trails Council, Scout executive Michael Marchese was paid $88,596 for part of a year’s work; he was hired there to replace Barnes. The three councils declined to make more current salary information available.

… LDS-supported Friends of Scouting drives have found some unique ways to increase such peer pressure on behalf of Scouts. It includes having local church leaders suggest specific amounts, and sending people to knock on every door in every neighborhood to personally ask for money.
A handbook from the Great Salt Lake Council, for example, includes suggested letters to be given to LDS members from their local stake presidencies (that oversee a cluster of congregations) and bishoprics (that oversee individual congregations).
“The donation level that is being asked this year is $50 per household,” the suggested letter for stake presidencies says, adding that any donation is appreciated. The suggested letter from bishops asks members to consider giving $100 if possible. It adds, “Anyone with children knows that $50 hardly pays for participating in a single seasonal sport.”
The letters add that the church “fully supports the Boy Scout program and has designated it as an activity arm of the Aaronic Priesthood,” for young males….

With the LDS Church’s record of killing Boy Scouts in preventable accidents, I would think that people would hesitate to donate.

In the Readers Comments section beneath the article about funding for Boy Scouts, some readers have also documented the ways in which the LDS Church uses the scout troops as a proselytizing tool:

When my son was in Scouts, he was told unless he came to church (LDS Ward) for the next 4 or 5 Sundays before Scout camp, he couldn’t go. And you can say this isn’t “official procedure” or it doesn’t happen all you want. It did. I spent a small fortune renting a cabin at Moon Lake that year to make up for his missing scout camp. Haven’t donated since.

Scouting in Utah IS different: other religions may sponsor troops (in fact, nationally there are more boys in Methodist-sponsored units than in LDS-sponsored units), but no other faith uses BSA for religious indoctrination. Other churches that sponsor troops simply donate their unused (on Saturdays or weekday evenings) facilities, but there are no LDS-style strings attached. Boys of other faiths are not pressured to convert.

And there’s this all-too-typical defense from a pro-LDS-troops commenter:

Why do gay activists hate the BSA? They jump on every opportunity to criticize the organization.
Are you people offended that there is effort to teach boys to become men, because growing up didn’t work out well for you?

Other churches that sponsor troops simply donate their unused (on Saturdays or weekday evenings) facilities, but there are no LDS-style strings attached. Boys of other faiths are not pressured to convert.

When I was in the Boy Sprouts ever so long ago, my troop was sponsored by a Presbyterian church. We never saw the pastor who apparently was busy doing whatever busy pastors do to keep busy. We saw his wife a lot, because her boys were in the troop. There was no proselytizing, no prayers, and no pressure to even appear religious.

But I’m sure the Mormons have managed to make the Boy Scouts part of their church rather than an organization for boys.

Old joke from my military days: What’s the difference between the Navy and the Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.

it was pleasant to see the vote at onenewsnow (the American Patriarchy News thread) gradually swing to 77% “No”, but it’s recently started swinging back a little – just in case anyone has an idle moment ….

… back from 3 days of watching rocket launches on the Salt Flats of western Utah.

Wait, there’s another rocket nut in the Horde?!? Actually, I can only fairly refer to myself as a once-and-future rocket nut, since I’ve been mostly on hiatus from the hobby for the last several years. I’m determined to change that this year (i.e., the NAR year, which effectively runs from NARAM, in late July/early August, to the next NARAM).

I have little to add to your byplay with Benjamin about rocket photography, except to note that it’s not size per se that matters, but acceleration, which in turn depends on thrust-to-weight: You can get a fairly slow liftoff with even small rockets (and neck-snappingly quick liftoffs with even fairly large ones), depending on weight and power/thrust curve.

‘Tis:

When I was in the Boy Sprouts ever so long ago, my troop was sponsored by a Presbyterian church. We never saw the pastor who apparently was busy doing whatever busy pastors do to keep busy. We saw his wife a lot, because her boys were in the troop.

This was also my experience with scouting (right down to the fact that my troop was sponsored by the local Presbyterian church!). However…

There was no proselytizing, no prayers, and no pressure to even appear religious.

…no proselytizing from the sponsoring church, but IIRC Scouting itself included a fair amount of presumed religiosity: Invocations and benedictions at events, grace at meals, even (again, IIRC) a badge called “God and Country.” It never bothered me at the time, because I hadn’t yet begun to question the ubiquity of religion, but looking back….

My son is a Cub Scout in a pack sponsored by the local Lutheran Church. Not much proselytizing, just a quick and easily ignored prayer before the annual banquet. However, every year, as part of the advancement requirements, they have to complete a faith requirement. I have simply interpreted “faith tradition” to mean the set of ethics I am trying to teach him, and “faith leader” to mean me. I’m not sure what will happen if he continues to Boy Scouts.

Ballard: I’m fine and you’re adorable. You’re beyond adorable, you’re…
Mellie: If you say “adorabubble,” I’m leaving.
Ballard: I wasn’t going to, but I love the fact you thought it was the next logical word.

Well, Caine did post one that has 40 bird chilies as the first ingredient. I think that one would brutalize my taste buds.

Bunsen, LOLing at your latest comment. What is wrong with these people? My great-grandmother would have ripped blu up and down for valuing herself based on her appearance, and she died back in the 70s. I was thinking that there has been a lot of progress since that time. I was wrong. :(

Random note to fellow horde who visit L.A.: if you like seafood and don’t like fancy restaurants, you have to get to the Paradise Cafe at (appropriately) Paradise Cove in Malibu. It just basic good seafood. It’s apparently also being run by the guy who used to run Gladstones before SBC screwed it up (though they may be claiming a do-over and putting it all back (and no, I don’t expect anyone to know what Gladstones is either; let me just say it’s where Sunset meets PCH*, and for decades it was famous locally)).

… I think I just did a footnote in a double-parenthetical. Don’t tell any of the people I edit for that I did that.

Re: rockets

I had a model rocket set once. It got fired once. I hit a bird (don’t ask me how); I think it was a pigeon. We buried it. I was about 6. I no longer have a model rocket set.

Let’s just say that It didn’t go over well with a lady behind the counter.
First comment: That shirt is horrible
My response: Oh it’s terrible (mocking voice)

Second comment (while she’s helping a different customer mind you and very agitated): Jesus may hate the Yankees but God hates Ugly.
response: I think your customer is waiting. God hates bad service

Third comment: I hope you’re proud of yourself
response: I hope you’re proud of yourself making a scene here over a t-shirt. Good job oh wizened defender of the faith. You’ve put me in my place. Now get back to making that shrimp salad sandwich. Uh oh shrimp?

I think that is still flying far over her head.

Not sure I’ll be going back there again. Which is a shame. Good sandwiches.

More than one, evidently.
It’s been about ten years since I launched anything, but rocketry was part of my life for a couple of decades. My first project involved a frog astronaut (named Yuri) who flew twice and was returned safely to earth, kept under observation for a week or so, then released into the wild. Question the ethics all you want (it was 1983, I was much younger then), but I’ve been to some big events and talked to other rocketeers and damn near everybody had a small animal story. The only one I ever heard with a happy ending was mine (thanks to extensive testing and multiple redundant safety features).
My last launch was a night shot from the bottom of a 300-foot deep volcanic crater in central Oregon while friends watched from the rim. I also pulled off a couple of two-stage night launches.
Whoosh. I love rockets.

Rev. BDC – I am finally thanking you for recommending the “Lees Brothers” cookbooks. The recipes are just fantastic. The macaroni and cheese recipe is the best I’ve ever made- and it is now heavily in the rotation of our family meals. I use Mostaccioli instead of elbows, though.

Hi Thread. Somehow I’ve gotten out of the habit of posting inane beer related comments here. Maybe in a few more days/weeks, who knows?

Any advice on getting an avatar working here? I sought to use Gravatar, which claimed that having a WordPress login also grants Gravatar login. However, even though my login has trappings of WordPress, Gravatar does not recognize me.

cannabinaceae, your FtB login is not the same as a wordpress login. If your FtB login doesn’t work with gravatar.com, go to wordpress.com and register (user name does not matter, won’t affect anything here), just be sure to use the same email address you used with FtB. Once that’s done, go to gravatar.com and sign in.

Caine
Extending a barely horde member an invitation to your home? You big meanie!!! (aww, I’m touched!) If finances and circumstance make it possible, I will be there with bells on. Odds are not good that the finances part will allow it.

My confusion over Kamakas estimated drive time though, is due to the fact that I can cross the entire state of Minnesota and half of North Dakota in 6 or 7 hours. I can’t imagine any route from Grand Forks to Altmont taking more than 4 to 5.

I’m exhausted, haven’t slept since Friday night. S’okay though, because I need to be early, early, early to sleep tonight. Fucking hospital appt at 10:00 effing a.m. Have to leave home by 8:45, so have to be up at stupid fucking 7:15.

Here I am! I met with my classmate this morning to go over translations. That part went as well as could be hoped – I’m usually pretty good when I have something clear to focus on and discuss. I just didn’t like the awkward part at the end where I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to leave or stay there and study. (After a little bit he said he was going to lunch so I figured that meant I should leave, but I still don’t think I handled that whole thing quite the way I was supposed to.) Then I got a little lost afterward, which was also not good. I guess it’s nice that I’ve gotten something done already today, but I’m feeling a little frustrated and disconcerted. Oh well. Time for lunch, then review, then… et cetera…

Wish I could make it to Chez Caine with the rest of you! That would be neat. And then you fascinating people could carry the conversation, and I wouldn’t have to figure out when I was supposed to leave… Sigh.

I’m exhausted, haven’t slept since Friday night. S’okay though, because I need to be early, early, early to sleep tonight. Fucking hospital appt at 10:00 effing a.m. Have to leave home by 8:45, so have to be up at stupid fucking 7:15.

:grumbles and cusses more:

Ack. Not good. I doubt you could use my get-to-sleep-early method (which involves a nice warm cup of kona coffee; yes, coffee puts me to sleep). Still related to the surgery, or just normal “can’t sleep clowns’ll eat me” thing?

Is this more stabbity hospital, or a “make sure you haven’t mutated and grew it back” kind of thing?

I find it’s usually best to have an excuse to use at the end of something. Like, after the main stuff was done: “Okay, well, unless you want to keep working on something else, I probably ought to get back.”

It’s a polite way to make it unambiguous, since I often have the same kind of trouble reading people in such situations.

If you want the entire comment header (including the permalink) to have that light blue background like on Sb while still keeping the separator, replace your line that starts with .comment-meta with the following:

Wish I could make it to Chez Caine with the rest of you! That would be neat. And then you fascinating people could carry the conversation, and I wouldn’t have to figure out when I was supposed to leave…

I wish you could too! And no, you wouldn’t have to figure out when to leave, you could stay as long as you wished. We even have rooms so you could have a ‘room of your own’ to retreat to at any time, even while conversation was going on. We’re pretty casual and happily anti-social here. You can hang or wander off, no questions. Well, except maybe “want a beer?” and “you having some of this spaghetti?”

Richard:

I doubt you could use my get-to-sleep-early method (which involves a nice warm cup of kona coffee; yes, coffee puts me to sleep). Still related to the surgery, or just normal “can’t sleep clowns’ll eat me” thing?

A couple of oxy c’s will take care of getting to sleep early. I’m a nightowl, I was ready to sleep at my usual time, around 5 a.m. If I did that, though, I’d be up all Sunday night, yada, yada, yada.

Is this more stabbity hospital, or a “make sure you haven’t mutated and grew it back” kind of thing?

Find out about my anemia, get a cat scan of the pancreas (hopefully), have about all my blood drawn, hopefully avoid an endoscopy, all that. Bleargh.

Dang, I always love it when the wind swings around to come off the lake. At couple of minutes ago there was a 14 degree F difference between the reporting weather station near the lake, and the Waukegan airport (official for the area), which is further inland. Now it’s down to 11 degrees as the cool air moves inland.

@Nerd: my ‘case worker’ didn’t give me alot of details, but it sounds like its either outside sales or a mall kiosk. With my Ford POS car there’s no way I can do outside sales, but I think I could handle a workday at a kiosk. Really hoping this isn’t all a waste of my time.

I had a model rocket set once. It got fired once. I hit a bird (don’t ask me how)

I think it’s safe for you to go back to the rocket field: You could spend the rest of your life earnestly trying to repeat that event, and there’s very little chance you’d succeed; the odds of having it happen again by chance are infinitesimal.

Owlmirror
When you finish that tutorial…
In your #469 you provided some code to make PZ’s comments stand out.
Is it possible to do the same for other commenters?
Can I add custom colours for commentors as I choose?
(Why does my spell-check not like commenters or commentors?)

In your #469 you provided some code to make PZ’s comments stand out.
Is it possible to do the same for other commenters?
Can I add custom colours for commentors as I choose?

It depends on whether they’re registered or not. Or at least, it can be done easily if they’re registered; it might be possible to do it if they aren’t, but I am not sure how.

Every registered user has a class added to their comment that looks like “comment-author-XXXXXX“, where “XXXXXX” will be the name they registered with. You for example, have “comment-author-kiyaroru“; Caine has “comment-author-caine“.

You could easily add a line to the css file saying:

.comment-author-XXXXXX {background: colour}

To make them stand out.

It occurs to me that you could also use

.comment-author-XXXXXX {background: black}

As a cheapass killfile.

I actually tried doing {display: none}, for an even more thorough killfiling, but that was a little too much — it removed the comment so thoroughly that the line numbers did not show either, messing up the comment count.

And, as cool as what Copenhagen Suborbitals is doing, [a] their “spacecraft” didn’t get anywhere near space and [b] if you take a look at the post-recovery photos, I think you’ll conclude you wouldn’t have wanted to be the crew!

I think it would be possible to launch a human (though not to anywhere near space) using hobby-rocketry technology and have a 50/50 chance of recovering said human alive (best method, it seems to me, would be to have the “crew” come down independently of the rocket, using a parachute of the sort BASE jumpers employ). But given how near real space tourism is to the horizon, what would be the payoff for all that risk?

Hello everyone, I volunteered to help with performance testing and tuning the new server, and we are doing some testing over the next few hours, which will include creating some artificial load using some tools and help from http://soasta.com who do web site testing.

The idea is to find out how much spare capacity it has, not to make it so slow it’s unusable, so please comment here if you see any ill effects.

I actually tried doing {display: none}, for an even more thorough killfiling, but that was a little too much — it removed the comment so thoroughly that the line numbers did not show either, messing up the comment count.

Correcting myself again:

This utterly kills the text of the comments while leaving the name and line-numbering intact:

Ugh. I just looked at ERV, I guess for shits and giggles (ok, just for the shits, no giggles to be found), and they’re still going strong with whining about PZ and Ophelia and how they’re so mean and stoopid and such. Phil (the one most of us actually thought might be worth something) is making prostitution jokes about him, Abbie is still calling Pharyngula “heavily moderated and censored”, and in general they just can’t stop talking about it all. It’s more than a bit creepy at this point. It’s like a TET, but they have absolutely nothing else to talk about except how much they hate anyone involved with Watson, especially PZ.

Benjamin, you have my sincere, heart-felt sympathies. My son had a colonoscopy at (I think) twenty-two, because of rectal bleeding (also, I’m assured, not penetration-related). They found no reason for the bleeding, but then, they claimed to find no blood in the stool sample, either, even though it was sitting in a pool of blood that was not apparently generated close to the anus. The problem continued intermittently for a couple of years, culminating in the middle-of-the-night phone call I refered to in a previous Thread.

He was pale enough to portray a vampire, in spite of the generous dollop of yellow/brown skin tones that are his normal coloration. Double-plus ungood.

The surgeon later chided him for not having the problem addressed previously, Son explained the back-story, doctor looked in the hospital’s records…and found the hitherto-unreported record of that colonoscopy. I’m sure Son could have sued, but he was just so relieved to get a diagnosis and treatment that he let it pass. Fortunately, he had medical insurance that covered most of the bills, unlike when he had that colonoscopy in the first place.
–
hotshoe, congratulations on your Paying Employment. May you both be very happy together. :)
–

I don’t think the testing we did would have stopped anyone posting, it might have made the site a bit slower for a while, anyway its all done now. Thanks to Dan at http://soasta.com for help and tools. They have a free tool for testing web sites, he was showing me how to use it…

I went to Puerto Rico from East Harlem and entered scenes lifted from the night of the living dead as homeless junkies with open sores and abscesses hustled to get just one more bag of manteca [heroin] and then went home to infect their wives, constrained by the Catholic Church from condom use. “Better to die of AIDS,” counseled a bishop to a women seeking permission to protect herself, “than to commit a sin.”

If you would like, I can regail you with stories of monadnocks and exumed peneplains.

Seriously, all you need to worry about is the gas money. I’ll be bringing some food and beverage; if we’re all broke, we can fry eggs and potatoes, roast some weinies and we will all have a fine time.

PS My drive time is based on back roads. 80 on the buzzway? Not this trip. The fucking Interstate is quick but sooo boring in a *Monoculture Hell* kind of way. I want to see the small towns. The birdwatching is way better, too.

Good morning Thread. (I know I’m possibly in danger of being portcullised by writing a long comment.) In the past we’ve had a particular type of denialism regarding dictionary atheists, and PZ has often posted on that (my non-existent-gods, some threads from last year!) – there are some spectacularly obtuse ways that people can reason around the issue, for example, by insisting that a particular dictionary is the only legitimate definition, despite the inability of multiple dictionaries to concur with either each other or common usage.

A meme that seems to be going around suggests there’s a similar “dictionary misogyny” issue: if the dictionary definition is taken as meaning “hatred against women” then several strategies intervene to deny a possible association with any particular person or practice:

* first, “hatred against women” is universalised, so that only “hatred against all women” can possibly be regarded as misogynism, and only a person who indeed hates all women can be viewed as a misogynist;
* as a corollary, the hate speech against individual women is supposedly minimised from being harmful, because it is targeted rather than being indiscriminate. The expression of it – and particularly the obsessiveness of dwelling on it for months, along with the deliberately provocative vile language – must surely bring that into question.
* language is regularly deprived of context, nuance, and subtlety in these arguments, so that no words can be viewed as embodying “hatred”, in another attempt to escape the definition. An accusation that such-and-such a quotation is hate speech is thus doomed to fail because the targets will say, but you can’t possibly view these slurs as embodying hate? Isn’t it obvious we’re just kidding or pressing people’s buttons! (Even a full quotation of representative comments with context will be repeatedly denied as containing hatred.)
* lastly, the fact that the targets of the hate speech also include some male allies (like PZ) is likewise a convenient dodge: “we’re not misogynists, because we dislike some men too!” The apparent equal opportunity bigotry does not really avoid the charge that hatred against a certain category of women is viewed as legitimate, and the men who ally themselves with that category can be written off in the same way because of that association.

Back to your regularly scheduled socializing.
Goodnight, Caine! I don’t know if you’re still here, but if you are, go to bed!
I have too much vocabulary to review before Friday :( I can’t even figure out when I’m going to get enough time. Yes, I realize I’m posting on the internet right now and should be reviewing. If it helps, I just finished one chapter’s worth of flashcards and am about to go over the verbs from that chapter again since they seem to have fallen out of my brain somewhere along the way.

One gloomy afterthought. As a result, it’s probably not a wise idea to assert that anyone, anywhere, at any time in the whole Rebeccapocalypse disaster is a misogynist or a sexist, or even (less controversially) that while they may not be misogynist or sexist, their actions either have been misogynistic or sexist, or may appear to have been misogynistic or sexist – it’s just too easy to invoke one of the above strategies and beat the rap. It’s also way too easy an accusation to take offence at, in a display of either real outrage (“how dare you call me such-and-such!”) or feigned or mistaken indignation (“how dare you call me such-and-such”, when the criticism was not directly a person, but the idea they had given utterance to).

Circumstance will have to cooperate too. I do plan to come visit my Grandmas in Bismarck before October. I will try to make that coincide with a pharyngufield-trip if at all possible.

Do take the back roads and meander your way to Caine’s casa. May I suggest Arena Lake for bird watching? (Pelicans!) I’m sure every pothole is full to overflowing. Ducks and various waterfowl will be everywhere!

As a result, it’s probably not a wise idea to assert that anyone, anywhere, at any time in the whole Rebeccapocalypse disaster is a misogynist or a sexist, or even (less controversially) that while they may not be misogynist or sexist, their actions either have been misogynistic or sexist, or may appear to have been misogynistic or sexist – it’s just too easy to invoke one of the above strategies and beat the rap.

except that there really isn’t any other way to describe a sexist action. At some point you just kind of have to ignore the literalists, or maybe explain how they got the meaning of the word wrong, and move on. Not using “misogynist” and “sexist” just means we no longer have words to accurately describe thee actions.

I know, Jadehawk. I won’t falsely say its a “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” dilemma, because I think sexism and misogyny – whether unintended or deliberate – should be pointed out. My gloomy reflection is that invariably through this debâcle, exceedingly few people have taken a valid piece of criticism (and perhaps have felt immediately hurt by self-realisation of owning up to the implications of such views), gone away and thought about the ideas raised, and then returned to say “you know what, you were right to point out that I was being sexist, and I’m sorry that I did it”. It seems like the bulk response has been for a lot of Anonymous Internet Tough Guys™ to never admit having been wrong, to write tens of thousands of words reinforcing their positions, rather than admitting that criticism might have some validity.